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Tag Archives: CMMS

On July 31, 2018, industrial technology solutions giant Fortive announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Accruent, a real estate and facilities management software provider, from private equity firm Genstar Capital. Fortive will pay $2 billion in cash and expects Accruent to generate revenues of $270 million in 2018. This will come from its suite of software products used by Accruent’s 10,000 customers. Upon completion of the acquisition, Accruent will become part of Fortive’s portfolio of Field Services solutions alongside other brands such as Fluke, Gordian (RSMeans), and Industrial Scientific. Verdantix finds this is the biggest deal to date in the $4.9 billion market for real estate and building management software, which we define further in our recent report…

What does the deal mean for the broader real estate and building management software market? The deal shows the market is consolidating at a rapid rate. The largest real estate software vendors MRI, RealPage and Yardi have been locked in an arms race of acquisitions to further bolster their scale. Meanwhile, IWMS vendor Planon has pursued targeted acquisitions to support international expansion. This latest deal also highlights the emerging push by software vendors to make greater linkages between software used during the construction and operational phases of buildings. Witness Elecosoft, a construction software provider, acquiring Shire Systems, a CMMS vendor, to offer the construction firms and property investors it engages with a maintenance management solution…

[Admin: This post is related to the 08.01.16 post about CAFM, CMMS, EAM, and IWMS competitors. To see other related posts, use the Verdantix tag or Accruent tag.]

Applying condition-based maintenance with IBM TRIRIGA helps to assess a facility’s or an asset’s performance, capture its lifecycle costs, and to identify necessary repairs and replacements. An integrated set of performance metrics of a facility’s condition is needed to predict when to repurpose, or renovate structures.

Building operations and maintenance managers are primarily responsible for assessing the condition of building components like roofs, air conditioning, walls, electrical, and communications. Forecasting facility conditions and predicting repairs before failure occurs, results in cost reduction. IBM TRIRIGA automates demand and preventive maintenance services to reduce the cost of maintenance operations.

TRIRIGA’s facilities and operations manager is an intense CMMS that enables organizations to manage their building assets and facilities over their lifecycle in order to reduce maintenance expenses. It provides condition-based facility assessments that help you to prioritize the areas for capital improvement and assists you in extending the life of your facilities and facility assets.

Condition-based maintenance features of IBM TRIRIGA

Improves the value and environmental performance of facility assets through the capture and classification of facility, building system and asset deficiencies…

Evaluates the required investment, energy and operating cost savings, and return on investment of each opportunity…

Automates the generation of work requests and capital projects to manage the remediation of deficiencies or implementation of environmental opportunities…

[Admin: This post is related to the 03.30.15 post about facility condition assessments (FCA). To see other related posts, use the ValuD tag.]

The past few years have seen a surge of products and options that facility managers can use to examine, analyze, predict, and improve building performance and reduce energy costs. But connecting the dots in an increasingly complex web — the Building Internet of Things — often takes serious consideration, practical attention to budgets, and resolute effort.

Many organizations currently collect data, but want to use that data more effectively. This is the case for Texas Christian University. The university does a lot of data collection and monitoring but not a lot of data analytics, reports Chris Honkomp, assistant vice chancellor for facilities. “We have that on our list of issues to address in the next year, but are focused on installation of a new maintenance management system right now, and will address analytics as a part of this process.”

Many organizations have been collecting data for years, but as prices on the software that aggregates and trends these information points comes down, more facility managers are buying into data analytics of one sort or another. Just how far any specific organization has gone depends on a range of factors, including expertise, staffing levels, available data, time, and of course budget. A look at three facility organizations shows the range of current practices and challenges…

As a member of the IBM TRIRIGA software development team, it’s easy to get so occupied and busy within the isolated “bubble” of TRIRIGA, its partners, and its customers, that there’s no time or energy to wonder about our competitors outside the TRIRIGA community. Luckily, I recently found a few moments to perform a few Google searches for “TRIRIGA competitors” to see what’s out there for myself.

Here’s what I found. This might be ordinary to sales and marketing folks, but for developers like me, I found it enlightening. Not only 9 direct competitors with an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS), but also 13 other competitors offering Computer Aided Facilities Management (CAFM), Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Software as a Service (SaaS), and other solutions. There are probably more. But for now, enjoy!

Organizations with hundreds or thousands of assets need a way to manage them all in one place. What’s more, they typically want to schedule maintenance, track capital projects and reduce energy use without having to install multiple software systems. That’s where an integrated workplace management system (IWMS) comes in. But what is IWMS software, anyway?

IWMS helps organizations maximize the usefulness of all resources and assets within an integrated software platform where information can be shared…

What Is IWMS Software?

In 2004, Gartner coined the term “integrated workplace management software” to describe an enterprise suite that includes five components:

1. Real Estate and Lease Management: Used to manage the real estate assets of a corporation, from acquisition to disposal. This includes lease accounting, planning, request for proposal (RFP) management and tax management.

2. Facilities and Space Management: Just like facilities software, this application helps optimize the use of facility space. Users can manage physical spaces within buildings, manage employees and book and schedule rooms. It can also integrate with CAD files and building information modeling software.

4. Environmental Sustainability: Allows users to measure energy usage, track energy-related costs and identify areas of energy waste. This application can often integrate with building management or building automation systems allow users to centrally control various systems throughout a facility, such as air conditioning, lighting or ventilation. to establish benchmarks and analyze energy use.

5. Capital Project Management: This application helps with the planning and execution of new building projects or remodels (e.g., new construction or an expansion in an existing office building). It includes functionality for planning, bidding, document management and financial accounting.

These tools are integrated and housed within the same platform, all drawing from the same data. Thus, the greatest benefit of an IWMS is the coordination of all the above activities, says David Karpook, a strategic business consultant with Planon (provider of the Planon Universe IWMS)…

Many breakdowns can occur in updating facilities and equipment data. If work orders are not entered in a timely fashion then the data is almost obsolete and lacks the ability to be used to successfully forecast future expenditures. Many schools have addressed this by implementing a computerized maintenance management system solution, or CMMS, that can integrate day-to-day operations with capital forecasting and planning. And while good capital forecasting software provides valuable insight and support, it requires adherence to essential best practices.

1. Prepare inputs carefully. We all know that data generates more data, and the quality of what goes in affects the quality of what comes out…

2. Integrate the data. Integrating day-to-day and work order data into the master plan is key…

3. Preventive maintenance. As the old adage goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; so it goes with preventive maintenance…

4. Reinvest to prevent a backlog. Industry standards advise reinvesting 2% of the current replacement value of an item annually to keep from having a backlog of work orders…

5. Engage stakeholders. In creating a capital plan, it is imperative that the community be engaged early and often…